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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25046167">Though Your World Is Changing, I Will Be The Same</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/hephaestiions/pseuds/hephaestiions'>hephaestiions</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Choking, I think it's happy at least, Infidelity, M/M, Panic Attacks, break-ups, but there is hope, it might be considered open ending by some, things aren't really resolved</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 10:15:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>15,986</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25046167</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/hephaestiions/pseuds/hephaestiions</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I shower after work,” Harry had told him once, when Draco had asked what cologne had such longevity as to be effective after a full day of gruelling Auror work. </p><p>“For me?” Draco had asked. Teased, just a little. There had been a smile lingering on the edges of his consciousness, threatening to traipse onto his mouth. </p><p>“For Ginny,” Harry had said, voice flat. “She hates it when I come back sweaty and crackling with other people’s hexes. Did you know magic has a smell? I didn’t, until she told me.”</p><p>–</p><p>It's all fun and games, till somebody falls in love. Given his luck, it's obviously Draco who has to go and do it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>387</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>HD Wireless 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I do not condone the infidelity I have tried to portray in this fic. I firmly believe open communication is key. This is a work of fiction and an exploration of dynamics which might be consdiered unhealthy by many. I hope it is enjoyable regardless.</p><p>Song prompt: Slave to Love - Bryan Ferry</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Draco has discovered Firewhisky to be an excellent houseguest.<br/>
<br/>
The elegantly labelled bottle doesn’t speak, doesn’t poke him in the ribs, and most importantly is always up for a spot of midnight fun without complaining. Truly, everything Draco could want in a roommate rolled into one gorgeous bottle of amber liquid.</p><p> </p><p>It bears repeating, especially in present company, Firewhisky makes for an <em>excellent </em>houseguest.</p><p> </p><p>Pity that he can’t say the same for Blaise– the insufferable bastard– lounging across from him on the armchair Draco bought specifically for the aesthetic of Blaise Zabini in a suit striding black leather, playing with his fingers. It’s too late in the night for Blaise to be wearing a suit, but he still looks elegant in sweatpants and a white shirt, drumming his fingers against the inseam of his pants.</p><p> </p><p>It’s unfair, how good he can look at 11 on a night when he isn’t going clubbing. At the moment, he’s looking at Draco downing his second shot of Ogden’s Old like flavoured soda with what looks like mild amusement tinged with exasperation and Draco turns away with a scowl.<br/>
<br/>
He has beautiful fingers, Blaise. Long and elegant with nails filed to precision framed by manicured cuticles– fingers of a man who has never had to lift even one of them to get what he wants. No, Blaise gets what he wants through charming smiles and being at the right place at the right time and inserting himself into conversations where he doesn’t belong with practiced ease.<br/>
<br/>
Draco also knows he’s on his way from ‘mildly tipsy’ to ‘absolutely sloshed’ because that is about the time when he starts making observations about things like Blaise’s fingers and his wants and desires and maybe the cut of his jeans and the fit of them on his unfairly toned arse.<br/>
<br/>
<em>A tragedy,</em> Draco thinks, morosely pouring himself another shot. <em>Such a fine arse wasted on heterosexual married bliss.</em></p><p> </p><p>“I think you’ve had enough,” Blaise says, reaching for the bottle between them, placing it on the floor beside his chair. “That’s your third shot of this shit and your fifth drink since I’ve been here, so either spill why you called me choking on your tears or let me go back home.”<br/>
<br/>
“T–to <em>Astoria</em>,” Draco says, with an unbecoming hiccup. He absolutely does not whine– Malfoys do not <em>whine</em>– but the name Astoria drops from his lips with an unexpected note of resentment.<br/>
<br/>
“Indeed,” Blaise says, raising those perfectly arched eyebrows. No straight man has eyebrows that perfect. Figures that Blaise is not a straight man, but then, Draco wonders with no small amount of disappointment, <em>why marry a woman?</em> “Don’t tell me you still get jealous when you’re drunk. The betrothal was seven years ago.”<br/>
<br/>
“‘m not jealous,” Draco says, burrowing further into the luxurious leather beanbag he has chosen to flung himself onto. “Why would I be jealous? I’m <em>gay.</em>”<br/>
<br/>
“I remember,” Blaise says, dryly. “Quite clearly. And that wasn’t the jealousy I was referring to.”<br/>
<br/>
“What were you referring to then, you sanctimonious git?”<br/>
<br/>
Blaise shrugs an elegant shoulder. “The fact that all your friends are settling down and you’re watching them and panicking? Of me being able to do everything you were supposed to do? Of her because she married me? Take your pick, Draco, you’ll be right.”<br/>
<br/>
“I’m always right,” Draco informs Blaise, waving the whisky in his general direction. “And I never wanted to <em>marry</em> you.”<br/>
<br/>
“I know what you wanted to do to me, Draco. That’s not the point. You didn’t deny the other ones.”<br/>
<br/>
Draco doesn’t respond to that. There’s no point lying to Blaise after all. He can lie to himself all he likes, but Blaise will shoot him an unimpressed look and tell him to pull his head out of his arse with no preamble. It’s one of the reasons he likes talking to Blaise more than Pansy or Daphne or Theo. They always entertain his bullshit, clucking sympathetically like mother hens, but Blaise… Blaise doesn’t have time for his delusions.<br/>
<br/>
“Will you sleep with me?” Draco asks at long last, when he peruses his mind of appropriate conversation starters and comes up empty.<br/>
<br/>
Blaise coughs delicately.<br/>
<br/>
Draco shoots him a look. “What? Not like you haven’t before.”<br/>
<br/>
“I wasn’t married before, Draco. I was in Hogwarts and horny.” </p><p>“So that’s all I was to you?” Draco asks, trying and failing to conceal the hurt in the words. “An experiment at sixteen and a couple of fucks at seventeen?”<br/>
<br/>
“You know that is not what I meant.”<br/>
<br/>
“What am I to you, Blaise?” Draco asks, and cringes violently when the words come out pleading and desperate. He turns away when a worried light enters Blaise’s eyes. He can’t handle pity right now, can’t handle the sting of condescension.<br/>
<br/>
“What’s going on?” Blaise asks after a minute of silence. “Draco, talk to me.”<br/>
<br/>
“Go home to your wife, Blaise.”<br/>
<br/>
“Draco, <em>talk to me.</em>”<br/>
<br/>
“There’s nothing to say.”<br/>
<br/>
“Draco this isn’t about what you mean to me. You know what you mean to me. You always have. Either spill or I go to Pansy.”<br/>
<br/>
“Don’t.” Draco can’t handle Pansy. Pansy with her biting words and sharp fury and intense hatred of Draco’s ‘stupid’ decisions and her miserable fucking sympathy– he loves her, but he can’t– he doesn’t know– oh fuck it all, not <em>today.</em> Or tonight or whatever it is right now.<br/>
<br/>
He tries to organise the thoughts swimming in his head into a coherent explanation in which he doesn’t come off as too pathetic or too pitiful, but Blaise’s voice cuts through the fog in his brain with the forthright simplicity Draco both hates and loves him for–<br/>
<br/>
“Is it Potter?”<br/>
<br/>
Even the name is enough to draw a visceral reaction from Draco. He feels his jaw clench, his fingers tighten around the glass. Something rattles on the edge of the table and his whole being feels flayed open and raw.<br/>
<br/>
Potter. <em>Fuck</em> Potter. Or don’t because that’s what’s gotten him here in the first place, but seriously, <em>fuck Potter</em>.<br/>
<br/>
Blaise sees, of course he does. There’s no way to not see what Potter– even his name– does to Draco.<br/>
<br/>
“You said it wasn’t serious, just a bit of fun on the side.”<br/>
<br/>
There is no accusation in the words. Pansy would have thrown those same words at him like sharpened knives hurled in a rage with deadly accuracy. Instead, Blaise, well, he– he serves as a reminder. A reminder of a similar evening with a little too much drink and far more laughter when the confession had spilt from Draco’s lips like a happy, dirty little secret. Blaise had only told him to be careful then.<br/>
<br/>
If only he’d listened.<br/>
<br/>
“It’s <em>Potter</em>,” Draco says, as though it explains everything.<br/>
<br/>
In a way, he supposes it does. Blaise had weathered Draco through his obsessive periods when hearing Potter’s name would rile him up, seeing him in the hallways would make his accidental magic run wild. Blaise remembers the Draco from Hogwarts who had spent six years vying for attention he claimed not to want but exulted in when provided, however negative.<br/>
<br/>
<em>If you will not love me the most, you shall hate me with every cell of you that loves what is good and kind and honourable. If I cannot be what you wish to embrace, I will be everything you despise.</em></p><p> </p><p>“You promised to be careful, Draco.”<br/>
<br/>
“I tried.”<br/>
<br/>
“What’s the damage?”<br/>
<br/>
Draco laughs. It’s harsh and bitter, but there’s genuine mirth in the sound. He’s almost horrified at himself as he laughs at the predicament he has situated himself into, even as his throat, aching from the acrid burn of alcohol threatens to close up.<br/>
<br/>
“I’m in love,” he whispers into the leather of the beanbag. “He’s married, planning for a family, and I’m in love with him.”<br/>
<br/>
He turns and finds Blaise watching him with sorrowful eyes. For once, sorrow does not feel like pity. He looks into Blaise’s eyes, and with his heart in his throat asks in a hoarse whisper, “What do I do now, Blaise? He’s married, and he’s Harry fucking Potter and I am Draco Malfoy, but I– <em>I love him.</em>”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>Married men do not leave their wives for the mistress, Draco, no matter what they tell you</em>.</p><p> </p><p>He’s standing at the window, watching the lights of Camden flicker and dim and flare, the cigarette smoke curling from his lips into the night sky. There are no stars tonight, their fires shrouded in the a cotton candy graveyard of clouds. <br/><br/>Draco finds himself missing the strange familiarity of a bejewelled night sky. <br/><br/>He hears the click of the latch, and the door squeaks gently, letting in a burst of cold air into the room. Draco’s Warming Charms are excellent, but the slight draft provides him with an opening to shiver without arousing curiosity. <br/><br/>He doesn’t think he could admit to the fact that Harry’s proximity sends fever sharp chills down his spine. Doesn’t think Harry would stay if he did. <br/><br/><em>Married men do not leave their wives for the mistress.</em> <br/><br/>“I am no mistress,” Draco had said, swallowing around the choking feeling in his throat. <br/><br/>“Pardon me,” Blaise had snarked unapologetically, “I wanted to spare you some dignity. If it makes you feel better, married men do not leave their wives for the gay lover either, Draco. They have some sort of existential sexuality crisis, realise life is better with the white picket fence and 2.5 kids and the stable job and lack of scandal and send a brief apologetic letter to end the affair on a Tuesday morning.” <br/><br/>Being reduced to the <em>gay lover</em> had made him cringe harder than mistress. <br/><br/>The scent of woodsmoke and pine lingers in the air. <br/><br/>“I shower after work,” Harry had told him once, when Draco had asked what cologne had such longevity as to be effective after a full day of gruelling Auror work. <br/><br/>“For me?” Draco had asked. Teased, just a little. There had been a smile lingering on the edges of his consciousness, threatening to traipse onto his mouth. <br/><br/>“For Ginny,” Harry had said, voice flat. “She hates it when I come back sweaty and crackling with other people’s hexes. Did you know magic has a smell? I didn’t, until she told me.” <br/><br/>The smile had wiped itself clean off. <br/><br/>Of course he knew magic had a smell. How could one not when they spent three nights a week with Harry Potter and his casual displays of wandless, wordless magic that thickened the scent of a crackling fire on a winter evening in the air? The blanket of that magic kept Draco warm when Harry would get up, pull on his robes, spell his messy hair clean and dry after an orgasm and say, “Later, Malfoy,” and leave without looking back. <br/><br/>He stubs the cigarette out on the ledge of the window and vanishes it. He takes one last look at the starless night sky and draws in a deep, steadying breath. It doesn’t help much, but he feels less like he’s about to explode and more like he’s about to fall apart, and that makes all the difference in the world. <br/><br/>Harry makes Draco feel like an unstable firework shaking and quivering. An explosive Draco is an unpredictable Draco. Dangerous. But falling apart? Draco has done that a thousand and one times and if there’s anything he knows, deep and certain, it is how to fall apart with a smile and a wink. <br/><br/>He turns around, and finds Harry standing in the doorway, nervous and fidgeting. He’s always like this on a Tuesday evening, after spending all of Sunday in the company of the Weasley brood, in Ginevra’s loving arms and Ronald’s backslapping. He’s always a little late on Tuesdays, uncertain and aggressive, taking and taking and taking and giving nothing back. <br/><br/>He always looks at Draco with those stupid green eyes, like he’s looking for an answer in Draco’s face contorted on the throes of orgasm and Draco always has to close his eyes on Tuesday evenings to keep himself from facing the inevitable disappointment on Harry’s face. <br/><br/>Draco is not Harry’s answer, he has come to realise, no matter how much he wants to be. <br/><br/>He hates Tuesdays. More than once he’s gotten spectacularly drunk and promised himself he’s never coming back on a Tuesday. <br/><br/>He’s never been able to keep it. <br/><br/>And here he is, staring at Harry Potter cutting an imposing figure in the small doorway of a Camden motel, looking into the depth of nervousness and guilt in those verdant eyes and telling himself he’s here for the sex. <br/><br/>He’s always been so bloody brilliant at lying to himself. <br/><br/>“Potter,” he says, and Harry startles. “Enjoying the view?” <br/><br/>Harry scowls, and oh, this is familiar, because within a second, the nervousness is gone and the aggression Harry keeps sequestered away is leaching into every line of his perfect form. He steps in, and the door bangs shut and Draco knows from experience that Harry has thrown up locking and silencing spells in the same gesture. <br/><br/>“You’re angry,” he murmurs, wondering if this is typical Tuesday evening crisis rage or if something has gone wrong at the office.</p><p> </p><p>His question is answered when Harry says, “Shut the fuck up.” <br/><br/>Draco raises an eyebrow, and splays his hands open in a gesture of faux innocence. “I barely said anything.” <br/><br/>“Malfoy, I told you to shut the fuck <em>up</em>.” <br/><br/>It doesn’t hurt, the rage and the caustic words. It’s familiar territory. But though he’s seen it a million times, the accompanying undercurrent of disgust burrows under his skin like shards of a broken knife. <br/><br/>He shuts up. And waits. <br/><br/>Potter continues to stare at him, and though Draco wants to drawl <em>enjoying the view?</em> or <em>are you going to keep doing that all night?</em> or <em>should I put on a show since you seem fairly content watching? </em>he doesn’t, much too afraid that he’ll cross a line and Harry will walk back out. <br/><br/>Draco doesn’t think he can watch Harry walk away right now. Not the first time he’s seen him since the realisation that despite everything, he’s in love with the man. <br/><br/>Eventually something softens in Harry’s rigid stance, and Draco releases the breath he’d been holding, afraid to even move wrong. <br/><br/>He moves towards Draco, his strides long and his arms bulging under the unflattering Auror robes, and anticipation surges in Draco like the rearing head of a dormant serpent waking at the scent of blood. <br/><br/>“You’re late,” Draco murmurs, when Harry is close enough to hear the whispered words. <br/><br/>“Got held up at the office,” Harry murmurs back, stopping about a foot from Draco. He’s close enough for Draco to smell the peppermint on his breath, but still much too far away for his body yearning to touch and kiss and feel. <br/><br/>He knows Harry might be lying, that Harry probably is lying. He’s always late on Tuesdays, and most of the time Draco doesn’t bother asking, preferring undressing to wordplay. But today, it feels important to acknowledge that he has noticed, that some part of him might even have missed Harry in the moments that he wasn’t here. After all, every delay is precious time lost. <br/><br/>He knows Harry might be lying, but he chooses to believe the contrite words spoken into the air between them like a gasp of a prayer from a man on his journey back to the church, and feels something coiled tight and angry unwind just a little. <br/><br/>“New recruits bothering you again?” Draco asks. Harry had complained and complained about it the last time they’d met, dark mutterings about the incompetence of the children and their arrogant attitudes. “They think they’re Aurors and just because they know the law they can break it,” he’d murmured into Draco’s collarbone and Draco pressed his fingers into Harry’s knotted shoulders. “They think they rule the world.” <br/><br/>Now, his lips quirk just a little, crinkles appearing around the corners of his mouth. Draco’s heart aches something fierce. <br/><br/>“I don’t want to talk about the babies right now,” he says, and his words are full of promise Draco knows all too well he’s good at keeping. <br/><br/>“What should we talk about then?” Draco asks with a small smile of his own as Harry moves closer. There’s a breath of space between them and Harry’s hips are pressing against his own. <br/><br/>“I thought I asked you to shut up,” Harry whispers, and then his hot, slightly chapped, perfect mouth is settling onto Draco’s and swallowing his tiny, involuntary gasp. <br/><br/>Harry kisses like he casts– with effortless ease veiling astounding intensity that yields all the results he wants. Within a few seconds, Draco is losing the last vestiges of his self control, gasping and reaching up to cup Harry’s face in both his hands. Harry’s done his hair up in a topknot with a few strands lose about his face and Draco twirls a finger in the one falling into their eyes and tugs gently. He feels Harry smile against his mouth, and the universe seems to snap into alignment for Draco. <br/><br/>His chest aches, but he swallows against it and tries his best to not get too caught up in the liturgical chant of <em>I love you</em> that his brain has taken up.</p><p> </p><p>Draco’s never had any religion, none Wizarding, despite the fanatical cult he joined and none Muggle for obvious reasons. But as Harry’s tongue presses against his teeth and swipes across his bottom lip, and the lips pressing against his own bloom in a smile that tastes of forbidden hope and peppermint, he wonders if this is what faith feels like. <br/><br/>For some reason there’s none of their usual frantic disrobing and fucking and fighting involved in Harry’s movements today. He’s slower, savouring the kiss, licking into Draco’s mouth and gently pulling him apart at the seams. Draco feels like a teenager, because for fuck’s sake, they are <em>making out </em>but he feels giddy with it, almost delirious with joy and agony and ecstasy and heartbreak. <br/><br/>Harry’s hands are usually engaged in taking off Draco’s clothes during these first kisses. But when they finally break apart for air and look at each other with smiles that feel perfectly appropriate despite how out of place they actually are in their fucked up reality, Harry’s hands reach into Draco’s hair, his nails stroking Draco’s scalp gently. It feels a little too intimate, a little too hopeful and Draco knows he should pull away before this memory becomes something he can use to summon a Patronus, but he can’t. <br/><br/>He wonders when his self preservation deserted him, but he finds that he doesn’t mind if Harry keeps kissing him like he’s the centre of a universe Harry has created for himself. There are words locked away in the crevices of Draco’s mouth and words more dangerous kept kicking and screaming in the darkest cells of Draco’s heart. But he’s grateful that this moment seems too big for words or sound or anything except this spellbound eye-contact because Draco doesn’t think self control can be expected of him today. <br/><br/>Harry takes one hand from his hair and Draco barely stifles the urge to whine at the loss of contact. His eyes flutter when Harry doesn’t take it away, but instead, slides it down his back, tracing the bones and curves of his spine. There’s a look in his eyes that Draco can’t place, a look that scares Draco just enough for his eyes to close and his teeth to clamp down on his lip to keep him from saying something he’ll regret. <br/><br/><em>I love you</em>, the chant in his brain screams, rising with a thousand clamouring voices. <em>Harry, I love you. <br/><br/></em>Instead of letting the secret hurt him further, he lets himself revel, just for a minute, in the moment, in the knowledge that he’s in the arms of the man he loves, being touched and kissed and pulled against a chest broad and firm and strong, beating with a heartbeat Draco hears in his own core. <br/><br/>Harry’s hands are wandering, with less purpose than they’ve ever had. They trace the jut of his hips, they cup his jaw and Draco shudders at the touch of the warm, calloused palm against the sharp contours of his face. They slide down Draco’s side, and he smiles into Harry’s mouth at the sensation and his head spins when Harry smiles back. <br/><br/><em>I’ve missed you</em>, the touch seems to say. Maybe Draco’s reading too much into it, but what Harry doesn’t know can’t hurt him and what Harry doesn’t feel can definitely hurt Draco, but Draco ceased to care a while ago. </p><p>Draco raises his own hands tentatively, unsure how his touch will be perceived, whether his questing fingers will be the pin that pricks this bubble of paradise. <br/><br/>They don’t. Draco’s hands on Harry’s shoulders leach away the tension built up there, Draco <em>feels</em> it draw out and away from Harry’s body. Harry’s hands settle around Draco’s neck and it feels so <em>right</em> to slot his body against Harry’s and let himself drift into a mind-numbing, toe-curling kiss that the part of Draco on high alert drifts into the haziness enveloping the rest of his consciousness. <br/><br/>When Harry’s hands finally come to rest on the hem of Draco’s shirt, it doesn’t feel like a perversion of something Draco wants but can’t have, doesn’t feel like another aggressive attempt on Harry’s part to get through his life without breaking into a million shards. It feels natural, and it feels like home, and Draco feels a pressure behind his eyelids that he blinks away rapidly. <br/><br/>Harry doesn’t notice.</p><p> </p><p><em>I love you</em>, the voices say, whispering in the silence of his mind. Nothing else matters, just this, just the here and now, just them in a dimly lit room of a Camden bar, trying to find salvation in a situation that has already damned them. <br/><br/>Harry draws Draco’s shirt up and off his body, and when his hands aren’t tangled in fabric anymore, Draco reaches up and undoes the clasp of Harry’s robes and watches the maroon fabric fall to the floor in a heap. Harry’s in a black shirt and denims that Draco can’t wait to strip him of, but Harry’s on him again, pressing him back and pushing him down onto the bed. <br/><br/>Draco reaches out to grip the collar of Harry’s shirt before letting himself fall and they end up on the bed together, Harry landing on Draco with a surprised huff. <br/><br/>“Bastard,” he says, and grins, his dimples pools of shadow in the warm curves of his cheeks. Draco pulls him down and presses a soft kiss to the left one, letting it linger. His heart races as he wonders if it’s been too revealing, too emotional and if Harry will finally draw away, but Harry’s breath hitches and his grip tightens on Draco’s arms. <br/><br/>They don’t acknowledge it, but when Harry pulls away his pupils are blown dark. “Lie back,” he says, and the dangerous undercurrent to his words send shivers sparking down Draco’s body and gooseflesh rises on his arms. “Hands behind your head, and <em>don’t</em> move them.” <br/><br/>Draco raises his trembling arms and crosses them behind his head. It’s an exercise in restraint, and Harry knows, his eyes flashing and the tiniest smirk twisting his lips.<br/><br/>“Good.” <br/><br/>Draco bites his lip to keep from crying out. <br/><br/>He reaches up and brushes warm fingers against Draco’s Adam’s apple, watching hungrily as it bobs when Draco swallows. In one move, his face is buried in the curve of Draco’s throat, the hollow of his collarbone, tracing a path of open mouthed kisses up the column of exposed skin Draco bares for him. <br/><br/>Draco closes his eyes and tries not to cry out at the sensation. <br/><br/>Harry presses more kisses onto his overheated, sensitive skin and Draco stifles the uninhibited moans that rise to his lips, but he can’t help the whimper when Harry sucks at a spot on his collarbone. He cuts it off immediately, but it’s too late, the damage is done. <br/><br/>Harry moves away. <br/><br/>Draco doesn’t dare open his eyes. He’s fucking done it, he thinks, panic surging like a rising tide threatening to envelope and destroy everything in its path. He had heaven in his arms and he’s shot it all to hell, like always. He couldn’t even–<br/><br/>But then Harry’s hands are on him again, gentle and steadying and so tender and Draco can’t hold back the tear that escapes. He can feel the path it traces, down his temple, onto the sheets and he waits for Harry to move away, pick up his robes and leave, because Draco can’t even do the one thing Harry returns to him for right. <br/><br/>“Draco, look at me.” <br/><br/>Draco doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to see the gentle way in which Harry will let him down, doesn’t want to see that vitriolic undercurrent of disgust once again. All he’s ever wanted, he’s had in these perfect, unadulterated moments, and he doesn’t want to look Harry in the eye and let him see Draco fall apart when Harry takes it away. <br/><br/>“Draco, <em>look at me.</em>” <br/><br/>He shakes his head, feeling like a petulant child. <br/><br/>It’s unexpected when Harry kisses him. It’s close mouthed and chaste, just a brush, but it sends shockwaves across Draco’s skin, and something rattles somewhere in the room when Draco’s accidental magic shudders in the air like a flickering candle. <br/><br/>He opens his eyes, startled and terrified, and Harry’s looking at him with… with… <br/><br/>With something Draco doesn’t dare to name for fear of being wrong. <br/><br/>“You’re always loud,” Harry says. “Every time we fuck, Draco, you make it so good for me, Merlin, the <em>sounds</em> you make. Why are you cutting yourself off?” <br/><br/>Draco looks away. The clouds outside still obscure the stars like blankets of darkness, but here and there flickering lights rise like phoenixes. <br/><br/>He whispers, “I didn’t think you wanted to hear me right now.” <br/><br/>“Why?” <br/><br/>“It’s…” he hesitates, unsure how to convey that he doesn’t want Harry to run because Harry thinks Draco wants too much from him, that Draco wants something he can’t give him, that Draco could possibly be dissatisfied with even the scraps Harry hands him every alternate night of the week before he returns to Ginevra’s waiting arms. “It’s too intimate.” <br/><br/>He can’t meet Harry’s eyes, so he keeps his head turned away, trying his damnedest to not let more embarrassing tears slip. <br/><br/>He resists when Harry’s hand comes to grip his jaw, turning his face back towards those fucking eyes that will be Draco’s ruination someday. He resists, but it’s Harry, so his resistance falls like a house of cards in a sultry summer storm. <br/><br/>Harry’s face is unreadable and the familiar fear and heartache intensify. This will be the moment Harry leaves, he thinks, and digs his nails into his palms. This will be the moment he loses his only shot at heaven. <br/><br/>But Harry doesn’t leave. Doesn’t pull on his clothes or shut Draco down, or say in those closed, clipped Auror tones that he must leave now for personal reasons. <br/><br/>No, Harry bends down and whispers in Draco’s ear, “I want you to <em>scream</em> for me.” <br/><br/>This time, Draco gasps, and though he instinctively tries to bite down on it, Harry grips his jaw in the nick of time and brushes his thumb across Draco’s parted lips. It’s so intimate, the gesture so pure and unriddled with history or anxiety or any of the usual fears and fantasies plaguing Draco to death, that his throat grows hot and tight and the tide within him transforms into something like a bottomless reservoir of want and need and <em>Harry. <br/><br/></em>For a second, they lie that way, Draco vulnerable and staring as Harry’s thumb gently traces the shape of Draco’s lips– the arch of his cupid’s bow, the fullness of the parts he bites at all the time, the chapped crevices. <br/><br/>Then Harry smiles– the fucking dimple makes a reappearance– and says, “Where were we?” <br/><br/>“Y-you were going to make me scream.” <br/><br/>“Was I now?”<br/><br/>“Get back to it, Potter, fuck you.” <br/><br/>Harry’s laugh is bright and Draco wonders if this is how it feels to be an object in orbit. <br/><br/>Harry resumes his kisses, except now he’s moving steadily downward, sometimes chaste, sometimes filthy, sometimes brushing his lips gently and softly over the ridges of a scar and sometimes sucking a purpling bruise into the tender skin of his side. <br/><br/>By the time Harry’s mouthing just above the waistband of Draco’s jeans, the sounds and moans are falling uninhibited from Draco’s lips. Every time he thinks he might be going overboard, Harry’s voice sounds in his head,<em> I want you to scream for me.</em></p><p> </p><p>He wouldn’t know how to stop even if he wanted to, just as well that he definitely doesn’t want to. <br/><br/>He wants to touch Harry, bury his fingers into the curling hair resting against his navel, tickling him ever so slightly, but Harry asked him to keep his hands out of the way, so he keeps them itching and uneasy, tucked under his head. It doesn’t stop him from arching into the sensation of Harry’s mouth and the wonderful, delicious suction it provides and Harry eventually has to hold his hips down with both hands. <br/><br/>Draco watches the muscles of his arm strain against the black fabric of his shirt and his mouth waters. Harry’s so fucking strong, and he understands it so much better in these moments where he gets to just observe. <br/><br/>Harry looks up, mouth still working just beneath Draco’s navel and their eyes meet. If Harry’s mouth wasn’t otherwise occupied, he would be smirking. Draco’s lips part and his legs fall open of their own accord, but the smirk veiled behind Harry’s eyes intensifies. Draco feels the urge to blush like a fifteen year old with a crush and a boner. <br/><br/>And then, Harry’s hands are on his zipper, and Harry’s fucking eyes are still on him, and Draco is lost. <br/><br/>He hadn’t realised how painfully hard he’d gotten, too caught up in the emotions of it all. But he is hard as a rock in his pants, sweating and squirming and desperate to relieve the pressure and he almost untrapped one of his hands only for Harry to look up at him sharply, eyes brimming with warning. The frustrated groan had seemingly delighted Harry whose movements acquired a renewed fervour. <br/><br/>Harry shoves his trousers down to his knees, and Draco wants him to shove it off entirely so he can spread his legs for Harry as far as he wants to, but he’s too incoherent with lust and love and desperation to be making pleas for anything but Harry’s hands on his cock, right this moment. <br/><br/>Harry begins to press open mouthed kisses to Draco’s straining cock through the thin material of his pants and Draco almost sobs with the urgency thrumming through his veins. His fingertips crackle with latent magic, and one of Harry’s hands leaves his hips to palm at his own cock, which Draco realises is just as hard in the confines of his comparatively loose, and yet woefully ill equipped jeans. <br/><br/>Draco’s balls ache, he’s much too close already, and he doesn’t want to come like this, in his pants, like a teenager rutting against another against the stone walls of Hogwarts. <br/><br/>Harry seems to take mercy on him, because he hooks his thumbs under the waistband of Draco’s jeans and pulls it off. His aching cock is freed into the warmth of the room, the heated space between their bodies, and grows impossibly harder. Harry eyes with carnal hunger. <br/><br/>“You want me,” he says, looking at Draco, leaning up on his forearms. “You really want me.” <br/><br/>“Was there ever any doubt?” Draco asks, the words forming and falling before he can stop and censor them. <br/><br/>Harry doesn’t respond. <br/><br/>Instead he bends his head, and presses a soft, delicate kiss to the leaking tip of Draco’s cock. Draco bucks up with a startled gasp at the sensation– Harry’s soft lips touching him the most tender teasing he’s ever experienced in his life. <br/><br/>Harry swirls his tongue around the head, and this time Draco sobs, a wanton, keening sound and with the last remaining shreds of coherency, manages a strangled, “<em>More.</em>” <br/><br/>Harry indulges him, sucking the tip into his mouth, working it with the stiffened peak of his tongue, ruthless and unrelenting and Draco raises his head and crashes it back onto the stiff mattress of his interlocked palms. <br/><br/>He grits his teeth at the sensation of <em>just there but not quite</em> and Harry seems to understand his teasing ministrations are driving Draco over an edge because finally, fucking <em>finally,</em> he widens his mouth and slides Draco’s cock into it inch by painstaking inch as Draco howls in ecstatic pleasure. <br/><br/>Fuck Potter and his sinful, sinful body. <br/><br/>He bucks up, hips stuttering, unable to control himself and Potter chokes just a little. The hand on Draco’s hip tightens considerably, and Draco feels dizzy with the raw, heady power coursing through his body, spreading from Harry’s bruising grip on his hip. Harry’s magic is floating over him, leaching into the space between his cells, embedding itself deep into Draco’s very being. It’s adding an unfathomably erotic rush to the sex and Draco wants to thrash, wants to pull, wants to jump out of his skin, but all he can do is scream himself hoarse. <br/><br/>Harry takes him, down to the root, slow and careful. This isn’t something they do often, usually Harry fucks him and leaves. Sometimes there’s blowjobs, sometimes there’s handjobs, on one memorable occasion there was rimming. But this technique is something Harry has learnt relatively recently and it’s testament to his prowess at learning on his feet that within ten seconds, Draco’s toes are curling. <br/><br/>“Fuck,” he says, and his voice comes out raw and painfully hoarse. “<em>Fuck.</em>”<br/><br/>Harry looks up, and his eyes seem to say <em>that’s the general idea</em>, and fuck, Draco has never been this far and this deep in love. </p><p>Harry’s tongue is working the vein on the underside of his cock, narrow, stiff strokes that send electricity jolting down Draco’s spine. He switches it up ever so often with swirling motions, and broad, firm strokes and when he draws up, he wraps a hand around the base of Draco’s cock and strokes with perfect pressure. <br/><br/><em>You’re everything I want,</em> Draco thinks. <em>Don’t leave</em>.</p><p> </p><p>Anything he thinks now, says now, he can blame on his sex addled, overworking, excited brain. Anything he says now will be disregarded. It’s simultaneously liberating and gut-wrenching. <br/><br/>I love you, Draco wants to say. Except, if he admits to that in the throes of an orgasm and later pretends as though he didn’t fucking say it, he will have set the scene for his heart to slowly be ripped to shreds with a rusted kitchen knife. <br/><br/>He can’t handle the sort of misery that will accompany that particular occurrence. <br/><br/>He screams again, when Harry brings the hand holding his hip down to fondle his balls. He cradles them and strokes them, gentle and firm in alternating brushes of his skilful fingers. “It’s like stroking a clit, a bit,” Harry had admitted once. Even that memory isn’t strong enough to remotely diminish the heights of pleasure he’s reaching right now. <br/><br/><em>I love you, I love you, I love you. <br/><br/></em>Finally, when he can’t take it anymore, he balls his hands into fists behind his head and says, “Stop.” <br/><br/>Harry draws off immediately, a worried glint entering his eye. <br/><br/>“No,” Draco rushes to assure. “I liked it.” He pretends he isn’t blushing and adds, “A little too much.” <br/><br/>“Then let me go back to it.” Fuck, Harry’s <em>voice</em>. He sounds coarse and rough, and exactly like he’s spent the last few minutes deepthroating Draco’s cock, and it’s delicious in ways Draco does not know where to begin to list. <br/><br/>“No, I, I don’t want to come like that.” <br/><br/>“Oh?” <br/><br/>“I want you buried deep in my arse when I come,” Draco informs him, raising an eyebrow. “If of course, you’re… amenable to that,” he amends. <br/><br/>Harry laughs, and fuck, that laugh with the grating edge of his sore throat sounds huskier and lovelier than it has any right to. <br/><br/>“If I’m amenable? Merlin, Malfoy, I’m so much more than <em>amenable.</em>” <br/><br/>Draco feels the edges of his smile. <br/><br/>“Then I suggest you get to it.” <br/><br/>Harry’s hands return to Draco’s hips and Draco wonders if there will be finger-shaped handholds on them by the time Harry’s done with him. He hopes there are. He hopes there’s a claiming mark on his body for him to stare at in the mirror on the mornings he wakes up alone and covered in come and bruises and a sense of bone-deep shame. <br/><br/>Harry whispers a Vanishing spell and the constricting sensation of the trousers around Draco’s knees disappears. He immediately spreads them wider. With another flick of Harry’s fingers, Draco’s boxers disappear and Draco is naked and vulnerable under Harry’s sharp gaze. <br/><br/>Harry rises on his forearms, looming over Draco with all the elegant grace of a coiled panther and it is at this juncture of their sojourn that Draco realises Harry is still fully dressed. <br/><br/>“Too many clothes,” he murmurs. “It’s not fair.” <br/><br/>Harry’s smile is bright in the dimness. <br/><br/>“Take them off, then,” he says, and Draco’s breath hitches. Undress Harry. <br/><br/>Undressing a partner has always been something intimate and glorious for Draco. It is no different this time as he unbuttons Harry’s black cotton shirt, each fastening falling open to reveal inch by glorious inch of brown skin that makes Draco’s mouth water. There’s the smell of the cologne Harry uses, strong and heady, filling Draco’s senses and his mouth falls open, lips parting subconsciously as his tongue flicks out to wet his lips. <br/><br/>Harry’s blown pupils darken and his teeth come out to sink into the soft flesh of his full lower lip. On anyone else, the act would seem cheaply coy, but Harry does it so instinctively that the ache in Draco’s balls tightens.</p><p> </p><p>Draco wishes he had the patience to savour the exposed skin with touch and tongue, but he doesn’t. He needs Harry around him, within him, on him <em>right now</em>, and desperation does not make a good bedfellow of love. <br/><br/>He reaches down to unbuckle the belt Harry insists on wearing the Muggle way and feels Harry’s clothed erection against the heel of his palm. He pushes up slightly, with just enough pressure to draw a reaction out of Harry, but not so much as to hurt. Harry’s eyelids flutter shut and the moan that drops from his lips is as sinful as it is holy and Draco feels divine. <br/><br/><em>I love you. I love you. I love you. <br/></em><br/>By the time he’s loosened Harry’s jeans enough to slide them off his narrow hips, Draco is losing patience like a malfunctioning clock loses time. In one swift jerk, he pushes Harry’s jeans and pants down to mid thigh. Harry catches on, reaching down and pushing them as far they’ll go in this position and then proceeding to kick them off the last few inches until he’s looming over Draco, naked and gorgeous and glorious. <br/><br/>For one moment, time is stretched so thin, it doesn’t quite feel quite real. Draco simply stares at Harry, the contours of his face, the sharp line of his jaw, the edges of his curls violating the boundaries of his forehead to fall into his eyes. Draco raises one wandering hand and traces an arched eyebrow, marvelling at the way even this simple motion causes Harry’s eyes to fall shut and his breath to catch. <br/><br/>Harry lets him touch, lets him feel, and Draco is saved by the elegant bridge of Harry’s nose and the cliff’s edge of his cheekbones. <br/><br/>He’s so beautiful, it’s hardly fair. Could Draco have been reasonably expected to not fall in love? To not want to keep this close and never let go? <br/><br/>The moment shatters when he blinks, a sharp jolt into reality. Harry’s parted lips shift into a smirk and with a whispered spell, his hand is slick with lube. <br/><br/>“I want to feel it,” Draco says, quick and certain. “I want it to burn.” <br/><br/>Harry nods, circling his rim with one finger, and Draco gasps softly at the slight pressure and the teasing pleasure of the movement. “Inside me,” he manages through clenched teeth. <br/><br/>Harry obliges him, sliding the tip of his finger into Draco’s clenching hole. The intrusion burns something fierce, but it’s the sort of burn Draco enjoys with every fibre of his being. Every cell of him screams for more and every heartbeat rings true to the rhythm of Harry’s name. <br/><br/><em>I love you. I love you. I love you.</em> </p><p>Harry thrusts his finger in shallow, gentle movements, pushing in and pulling out until only the skin above his nails remains pressed to Draco’s hole. <br/><br/>“Deeper,” Draco says, when the burn fades and the movement becomes a repetitive motion of <em>almost but not quite</em> pleasure. Harry slides in to the first knuckle, and Draco hisses out a breath. <br/><br/>“Let me touch you,” he begs, remembering Harry’s instructions to keep his hands under his head during the blowjob. Harry looks up, and their eyes meet in a fierce collision of desire and <em>yes</em> and <em>please</em> and <em>do what you want, just let me stay here with you</em>. <br/><br/>Unspoken words, but they are louder, clearer, more of a declaration than anything either of them could ever phrase with sound and meaning. <br/><br/>Harry pulls out his finger and pushes in again, burying himself a little further and Draco’s hands fly forward, digging into Harry’s smooth, taut shoulders with an iron grip. He can feel the muscles bunch and flex, parts of a well oiled machine. There’s magic roiling and surging under those smooth expanses of skin and it flows to pool around Draco’s hands with easy familiarity. <br/><br/>Harry’s magic seems to know him, seems to seek him out, and Draco wants to lose himself in this moment to never be found. If he died now, not only would he die happy, he would die content. It is more than he had ever dreamed of his future entailing and it is more than he deserves, but Draco Malfoy is not a man in the habit of denying himself so he indulges, luxuriating in the feel of his hands on Harry and Harry’s hands in him. <br/><br/>“More,” he begs, and keens when Harry buries his finger fully in Draco’s arse, its path slicked by lube and Draco’s wanton writhing. He leaves it in and stars burst behind Draco’s eyes with the force of the feeling of fullness. “Move,” Draco says, and thrashes when Harry acquiesces, warm, broad palm a gentle pressure against Draco’s arse cheeks. <br/><br/>“Another,” Draco demands when the burn of the first finger fades. This time Harry isn’t quite as gentle, moving faster, letting the lube and the slight stretch do half his work for him. His poisoning fingers brush against Draco’s prostate and when Draco bites into the pillow with a howl, Harry repeats the motion enough times for the pillow to be permanently pockmarked with the evidence of his agonised ecstasy. <br/><br/>The pressure building in his belly reaches a fever pitch, and Draco knows he’s going to combust if Harry keeps this up. “I’m… close,” he manages around the brutal thrusts of Harry’s skilled fingers. “Too close.” <br/><br/>Harry pulls out. <br/><br/>Draco pants, whining slightly at the loss of contact, but within seconds, Harry’s lube slicked cock is pressing against his entrance, warm and thick and heavy and complaint dies on his lips like a budding rose in a thunderstorm. <br/><br/>Harry pushes in, and he’s so careful, so tender and gentle, one hand reaching up to brush Draco’s sweaty hair away from his forehead. <br/><br/><em>I love you. I love you. I love you.</em> <br/><br/>Draco lets one hand slide from Harry’s shoulder, down the sweat slicked planes of his back to the dip of his spine, back up again, to the short, fine hairs of his nape. He buries his hand in the curls at the base of Harry’s neck, twisting and pulling as Harry pushes in at an agonising pace. <br/><br/><em>I love you. I love you. I love you. </em><br/><br/>“Go faster,” Draco says, almost on the verge of begging as Harry drags his cock out, slow and long, Draco’s passage clinging to it. <br/><br/>Harry’s eyes close as the words seemingly strike against some unknown part of him. When he opens them again, something in them makes Draco uneasy. It’s different from the looks Harry has been giving him all evening and Draco’s stomach twists in fear. <br/><br/><em>Married men don’t leave their wives for the mistress, Draco,</em> says Blaise’s voice in his head in that same sorrowful murmur.<br/><br/>Draco closes his eyes against the foreign light in those green eyes and focuses on the sensations. <br/><br/>Harry’s hands come to grip Draco’s shoulders, and his hips buck in a harsh motion, bringing Harry’s pelvis flush against Draco’s arse as he bottoms out. His cock nails Draco’s prostate dead on and the stimulation is enough for Draco to gasp and cry out. “Yes, just like that,” he says, trying to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head. “Just luck that, Harry, please.” <br/><br/>Harry’s fingers press into the sides of Draco’s neck, where the arch of his throat meets his collarbone. He’ll have to glamour the bruises away tomorrow. <br/><br/>Draco arches to meet Harry’s motions, too far gone in the rush of pleasure to give half a fuck about the words and sounds spilling from his mouth. He could be proclaiming Harry the Queen and he wouldn’t know, he could be spilling every last dirty secret and he wouldn’t know. <br/><br/>When one spectacular thrust sending jolts sparking down Draco’s spine causes him to scream loud enough for his tenor to break through any silencing charms, Harry clamps a hand down over Draco’s mouth. <br/><br/><em>Scream for me.</em> <em><br/><br/></em>Draco’s eyes widen, he’d thought Harry had wanted him to be loud, to make no secret of his pleasure, to not shield his feelings. <br/><br/>But the strange light in Harry’s eyes has intensified and the hand on his mouth is too strong. <br/><br/>Draco closes his eyes again. <br/><br/>He takes his hands from Harry’s shoulder, bringing one down to fist at the bedsheets, and the other to his red, painful cock. He strokes rapidly, quick and purposeful strokes that leave him breathless and panting, and within seconds, he is coming all over his clenched fist. The sounds he makes are muffled and thin against the tightness of Harry’s hand. Harry doesn’t seem to care. <br/><br/>His over sensitised channel clenches and undulates against Harry’s brutal thrusts and within moments of his own orgasm, Harry’s chasing his own high with a guttural cry and a particularly sharp thrust that he can’t sustain, sending him shuddering and shaking straight into Draco’s arms. <br/><br/>Warm wetness floods Draco’s arse. <br/><br/>It’s unpleasant in a way sex with Harry has never been. <br/><br/>But then again sex with Harry has never given him cause to feel the way he had been even a few minutes ago, with Harry’s hands tender on his skin and his words a gentle reminder in Draco’s head. <br/><br/>Now, the memory is tainted by the pressure of Harry’s hand on his mouth and the strange light in his eyes that leaves Draco feeling hollow.</p><p> </p><p>He lets Harry lie on him as long as he needs to as he catches his breath. <br/><br/>Draco winces when he eventually pulls out of him, the sick squelch of lube and come sounding unwelcome to Draco’s straining ears. Harry murmurs a cleaning charm, and the wet feeling is replaced by a tightness that has Draco gritting his teeth. <br/><br/>They coexist in silence for a few beats, Draco on his back, staring down at his hand splayed against the red sheets, Harry on the edge of the bed, as far away from Draco as he can get without physically leaving. It feels stifling despite the distance. <br/><br/>“What was that?” Harry asks, when the silence grows uncomfortable. <br/><br/>“What was what?” Draco asks, cringing when his voice comes out dull and heavy. <br/><br/>“All of… that.” Harry makes an expansive gesture between them that seems to suggest the happenings of the evening in their entirety. <br/><br/>“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Draco says. And it’s a half truth, because while Draco knows what Potter might be suggesting– why the emotion? Why the sounds? Why the words and the comfort and the– but he doesn’t know why Potter’s asking him. He didn’t initiate this strange, slow pace, didn’t ask for Harry to treat him like a lover. <br/><br/>So now, to hear Harry throw those words at him with the accuracy of a Bludger hitting its mark, it feels like a plunge into the cold water of the Great Lake. <br/><br/>Draco’s drowning. <br/><br/>“Did you cast a spell on me, Malfoy?” Harry growls. “Did you somehow, I don’t fucking know with Death Eaters anymore, did you somehow feed me a love potion or something?” <br/><br/>“<em>What?</em>” <br/><br/>“I don’t know Malfoy!” Harry screams, throwing his hands up. The edges of the silencing charm shake, Draco feels the tremors course through his body. “I don’t bloody know how I could look at someone like you and think–“<br/><br/>Harry cuts himself off, but Draco’s heard enough. <br/><br/>“Someone like me and think what, Potter?” He asks, trying to sound indifferent and failing miserably. The words come out choked and harsh and far too expressive for the situation at hand. “That I might deserve something that isn’t you fucking brutalising my arse on the daily–“<br/><br/>There’s a constricting sensation around his throat, and he chokes on the words. “I kept fucking asking you,” says Harry from the other side of the bed, voice low and deadly, “to shut the fuck up.” <br/><br/>Draco’s hands fly up to claw at his throat, but Harry’s rough magic is unrelenting. He feels the air burn in his lungs. It’s a struggle, one rougher than any Draco’s used to, just to breathe. <br/><br/>The urge to give up is stronger than it’s been in a while, and a solitary tear escapes Draco’s eye and trickles down his cheek. </p><p>The pressure eases. When Draco’s eyes focus on his surroundings again, he sees Harry hovering by the bed, rage and guilt chasing each other across his features. <br/><br/>“I didn’t mean to do that,” he whispers, hands balled into fists by his side. “I– I lost control.” <br/><br/>Draco nods. He understands, and he wonders when he lost the ability to stay angry with Harry. “It’s fine,” he says, and Harry flinches at the rough quality of his tone. Being choked by tendrils of wild magic will do that to a man, Draco does not add. <br/><br/>“It’s not fine,” Harry says under his breath, swiping his hands through his hair, brushing errant strands out of his face. “It’s a fucking mess.” <br/><br/>“Potter,” Draco says, because even when Harry has hurt him, in ways that have nothing to do with pulling a magical noose around his neck tight, he can’t bear to watch Harry hurt himself. “Potter, look at me. I’m fine.” <br/><br/>Harry looks at him, and Draco’s mouth goes dry at the anguish writ clear upon the slant of his mouth and the ruddy flush of his cheeks. He knows what’s coming. <br/><br/>“It’s not working out,” Harry says, and Draco’s heart, small and weak as it is, feels like it’s being pushed through a shredder. “We’re not working out.” <br/><br/>Draco wants to get up. Wants to fight and rage and slam Harry back against a wall and fuck him until all thoughts of Ginevra are obliterated from Harry’s mind. Draco wants to do quite a lot of things, he realises, lying upon the bed, watching tears spring to Harry’s eyes, but he doesn’t have the willpower or the energy to go through with any of them. <br/><br/>If this is what Harry wants, this is what Harry will get. <br/><br/>“You’re certain?” he asks, and for once two decades of ceaseless training in the art of Pureblood facades comes into use as he schools his features into an imperturbable mask. He meets Harry’s eyes, and whatever’s left of his heart screams and beats a feeble rhythm against the walls Draco is throwing up around his emotions, but he ignores it in favour of maintaining eye contact.<br/><br/>Harry nods, looking away. <br/><br/>“In that case, Potter, the door’s that way.” <br/><br/>Harry’s eyes dart back to him for a split second and Draco doesn’t know if it’s a trick of the light or his yearning, useless imagination that paints those expressive verdant windows in emotions– longing, desperation, hope. <br/><br/>But within moments, the Saviour turned Auror returns and Harry’s jaw hardens, his eyes turn cool and his voice cuts through the air crisp and sharp. <br/><br/>“Well, I’ll be seeing you around, then,” and Draco feels like a pardoned criminal, clearly dismissed. <br/><br/>It rankles. <br/><br/>“I think I’ll stay the night here, if you don’t mind,” he drawls, and Potter’s eyes flash at the thwarted opportunity to have the last word. “I’d ask you to spend it with me, but seeing as you just broke it off between us, toodle-oo, Potter. Off you go.” <br/><br/>He tries to tune Potter out as Potter slips on his pants, then his trousers, followed by his shirt. He stares up at the ceiling, barely registering the peeling plaster in one corner as his mind whirls through memories and emotions, sucking him into a vortex he doesn’t quite know the way out of anymore. He hears the swish of Harry’s Auror robe as he lifts it from the ground and slips it back on and the low murmur of a breath-freshening charm and a cleaning charm. He pretends to not understand why Harry would need either of those even as his treacherous mind conjures images of Harry and Ginevra in each others’ arms, smiling and laughing and kissing. <br/><br/>He tries to hold on. <br/><br/>The door opens and bangs shut, and finally the Silencing Charm on the room falls. Somewhere far away, an owl shrieks. <br/><br/>There’s a tightness in Draco’s throat and a tell-tale wetness on his lashes, but he finds himself unable to even lift a hand to wipe it off. Instead his hands drift to the bruises on his lips, on the sides of his neck, on his thighs, and press in, a reminder of what Draco had and lost. <br/><br/>The tears come freely, flooding his vision, blurring his eyesight, suffocating him until he’s gasping for air, pleading to gods who won’t listen for mercy. He has sinned, many times, in many creative ways, and surely this is penance, for otherwise nothing could be handcrafted better to hurt him deeper. <br/><br/>Outside, the clouds have parted and the stars have risen– bright, shining points of light. In the haze of agony and despair, the stars and the lights of Camden nightlife blend together into one pulsing, writhing mass of flashing colours, and when Draco buries his face in the pillow and screams, the explosion behind his eyes is riotous.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After the War, when no one had been willing to hire a branded Death Eater, Draco had panicked.It was undeniably true that even after the heavy War Guilt fines and the many restrictions on the Malfoy vaults, Draco had enough gold for three generations to live comfortably without working. However, this wasn’t a prospect he particularly cherished– socialite life of leisure and gossip had seemed akin to suicide at the time and he had desperately sought opportunities to rebuild his life. <br/><br/>Even with his perfect OWLS and his more than satisfactory NEWTS, he’d been unceremoniously turned away at the door by reputed Potions Masters and received more than one polite letter of rejection from apothecaries, programmes, apprenticeships and the like. He’d been about to give up and move to France with his mother’s blessing, begging England with every step he took to give him a reason to stay. <br/><br/>It had come to him in the form of one of his father’s old acquaintances, Archibald Scrivenshaft. He’d shown up at the gates of the Manor one Sunday morning, almost a year after the War to inform Lucius Malfoy, one of the largest investors in Scrivenshaft’s, that sales were dropping and the shop stood on the verge of total bankruptcy. <br/><br/>Lucius Malfoy was of course in Azkaban, and therefore heard nothing of Uncle Archie’s lengthy list of woes, but Narcissa and Draco both suffered through his lengthy tirade about the post-war economy and Shacklebolt’s ineptitude as Minister. <br/><br/>“Have you considered modernising the shop?” Draco had asked after Archibald had finished blaming his pathetic condition on every factor that wasn’t his incompetence. “After the War, people aren’t looking for traditional supplies and techniques anymore. Selling parchment made of imported plants and macaw feather quills will not bring you new customers.” <br/><br/>Archibald had predictably gone red in the face and had blustered for another fifteen minutes about the importance of tradition and how the modernisation of the economy by introducing electricity and television ruined lives. It had predictably circled right back to Shacklebolt and his ‘pro-Muggle’ schemes and how they damaged Wizarding Society. <br/><br/>Draco’d been sick to the back teeth of it. To hell and below with traditional fucking Wizarding Society. <br/><br/>“I’m pulling the Malfoy funds,” Draco had said, leaning back in the armchair. “This doesn’t seem like a well thought out investment to me.” <br/><br/>“Darling–“ Narcissa had begun, but one look at his face, and she’d caught on. “I absolutely agree with you,” she’d continued. “Lucius was always so fond of you, Archie, he knew all about the little problems of the shop, of course, but he still poured in Galleons, knowing he was doing you a favour. I can’t expect the same of Draco.” <br/><br/>“But– but, these are old alliances!” Scrivenshaft had said, panicked and wide-eyed. <br/><br/>“Then I suggest you champion the cause of modernisation,” Draco had retorted, with a cool smile and a shrug of his shoulders. “Pardon me, Uncle Archie, but Malfoy funds are being deposited sparingly in businesses we trust to succeed. I cannot base my decisions on the past and fail to take the present into account, it would be improper.” And then, just to seal the deal, he’d added, “I’m certain Father would agree.” <br/><br/>There hadn’t been a choice after that. <br/><br/>Scrivenshaft’s began stocking Muggle stationery soon enough. It started with fountain pens and notebooks, both of which had enthralled Draco. Gradually, with the resounding success of the products, they branched out, bringing in lines and brands of gel pens, post-cards, post-it notes, pencils and erasers, drawing materials. Muggleborn startups began writing to them with offers, newspapers accepted their advertisements. </p><p>For the first time since the War, Draco found purpose in doing something proactive and Scrivenshaft’s quickly became a second home. His extensive collection of blank, sleek notebooks grew by the weeks and though perfectly useless, Draco adored how they looked stacked up against each other on his mahogany desk. <br/><br/>“Darling, does it make you happy?” Narcissa had asked, when Draco had been looking through potential offers for the new line. <br/><br/>“Yes,” he’d said, and that had been that. She’d even donated one of her vintage eagle feathers to be auctioned for a fundraising event, and that silent show of support had screamed louder than any words. <br/><br/>Ah, Malfoy family love, a strange thing on the best of days. <br/><br/>He’s on his way towards Scrivenshaft’s when Ginny Weasley accosts him on the sidewalk of Diagon Alley. She’s smiling, warm and pleasant with no resentful undercurrents when she wishes him a good day and asks how he’s been doing like they’re old acquaintances. He blinks, taking in her cheery countenance and her hand on his arm and wonders how it is possible for someone to be so distinctly impossible to hate. <br/><br/>“Would you like to get a coffee?” Weasley asks with a small smile and a tilt of her head which sends the messily done braid flying curling over her shoulder. “Luna’s shop is just around the corner.” <br/><br/>“I have to go to–“ he begins apologetically, gesturing towards Scrivenshaft’s large display a little beyond them. <br/><br/>“Scriven’s?” <br/><br/>“Yeah.” <br/><br/>“It’s a Saturday, Draco, spare me some time.” <br/><br/>He doesn’t know why she’s treating him like a friend. They aren’t friends. They’re tentative acquaintances who know each other through Harry Potter and Hermione Granger and make small talk at social gatherings but otherwise stay out of each other’s hair. <br/><br/>“A coffee couldn’t hurt,” he allows. Though he envies her, though he almost begrudges her the married bliss she enjoys with Harry, he doesn’t, he can’t hate her. Ginny Weasley is much too charming, much too forthright and much too witty to be hated by anyone. <br/><br/>He looks at her, imagines her fiery hair against the brown, scarred skin of Harry’s chest, and something twinges deep behind the walls he’s built to keep himself safe from Potter and the baggage he brings. <br/><br/>They head down the sidewalk together for Lovegood’s cafe, a quaint little space, circular from within with floating chairs and sentient tables rather cheerily named Moonshine. He’s been there before, to support her endeavours when she was just starting out, and he’d discovered it to be a surprisingly cosy space with surprisingly enjoyable company. It helped that Luna had asked freed Hogwarts elves to help her with the food, and the croissants and thick jam had reminded him of Hogwarts. <br/><br/>The cat’s head shaped bell jingles when they push open the door and Luna looks up from the counter with a wide smile. It assumes a delighted edge when she spots them and her soft voice turns a shade excited when she calls out, “Ginny, Draco, it’s lovely to see you!”<br/><br/>Draco has often wondered how Harry’s collection of friends turned out to be so charming. His friends are a motley lot– Pansy’s hard to like on her best days and Blaise is far too self centred to give a damn about anyone’s opinions. Theo’s– well, Theo’s dead, but even when he had been alive, it had been a difficult pursuit to wipe the perpetual sneer of his face and after Crabbe’s death, Goyle swam into a vat of vodka and never emerged. <br/><br/>But Harry’s friends– once he started getting to know them beyond the insufferable Gryffindor exteriors– are genuinely pleasant people. <br/><br/>Hermione Granger had shown up at Scrivenshaft’s one day, with an uncertain edge to her demeanour and a small smile. Draco had been inside at the time, perusing the fountain pens, and she’d walked in, looked around with fascination writ plain across her face and when she’d spotted him, her face had fallen and she’d turned to leave. <br/><br/>At the time, Draco hadn’t known why Granger’s disappointment twisted something inside his core, but he’d called out, quietly to her, stopping her in her tracks. <br/><br/>“Was there something you needed?” Draco had asked, unsure how else to extend an olive branch. <br/><br/>“I just…” Granger had turned, and the wistful air about her had sent a pang of guilt through Draco. “I just missed stationery shops a lot, when I was young. Hogwarts didn’t… accept work written in pen, Flitwick sent back more than one essay… but now–“<br/><br/>‘It feels a little more like home.” <br/><br/>She’d looked up, surprised, and tentatively pleased, and the smile that had broken out had been infectious. “Yeah. Yeah, reminds me of the little neighbourhood shop I’d go to every weekend because all my pens ran out of ink too quickly.” <br/><br/>“Once a swot, always a swot,” Draco had said, and first Granger’s eyes had flashed fire before she’d realised he was joking. <br/><br/>“You’d know,” she’d thrown right back at him, before venturing further in to stare in wonder at the stacks of notebooks. <br/><br/>They’d struck up a tentative friendship, one based on book recommendations and supplies, until Granger had come in one day, frazzled and tired, with dark circles under her eyes so deep that Draco had wondered if she’d slept at all. <br/><br/>“Something the matter?” He’d asked, when she’d fallen asleep at the counter, head pillowed on her arms, jolting awake when another customer had rung in. <br/><br/>She’d yawned and looked embarrassed until he’d told her it was no matter, he practically owned this place anyway, and if she wanted to use his billing counter as a bed, she could go right on ahead. <br/><br/>“You lived in the Gryffindor dorms for years,” he’d reminded her, “Figured you’d be used to a little discomfort.” <br/><br/>She hadn’t responded immediately, but after a brief pause she’d said, “Hey Draco, want to get coffee?” <br/><br/>“I’m gay,” Draco had blurted out immediately, horrified at both himself and the situation. Granger hadn’t bothered to comment on it, raising a sceptical eyebrow instead.</p><p> </p><p>“And I’m married.” <br/><br/>And that was how he’d been roped into donating large sums of money to a research facility working with Wolfsbane, another fund for War orphans and investing in Lavender Brown’s up and coming skincare line for witches of colour. <br/><br/>That was how he’d come to know Potter better, how he’d discovered Ronald Weasley’s weakness for melted choco lava cakes, how he’d come to know that Ginny Weasley hadn’t taken Potter’s name even after their marriage, because she’d wanted to make a statement: I married for love, not a title. <br/><br/>The first time Harry and him had fallen into bed together, Harry had shut his eyes and cried in the aftermath, curling into a ball on his side and screaming Ginevra’s name. <br/><br/>Draco hadn’t known what to do, but an uncomfortable tightness had wormed its way into his chest and had expanded into a writhing beast since. <br/><br/>Now, Ginny grips him by the elbow, dragging him over to one of the best corner tables of the cafe, a well lit and cozy nook that feels warm in a way nothing else in Draco’s life does. <br/><br/>Luna sends over a floating Pygmy Puff to take the orders, and he asks for mint flavoured hot chocolate while Ginevra orders an Earl Grey. <br/><br/>“How’ve you been?” she asks when the pink creature has flown back. “It’s been a while since we saw each other.” <br/><br/>“I’ve been alright,” he responds, unsure how he’s expected to meet her eyes. <em>I’ve been fucking your husband for the last seven months. I’m in love with him. I wish I could kiss him, but he left me.</em> “Keeping busy.” <br/><br/>She lets out a breath. “Keeping busy sounds good,” she says, almost mournfully. “Since I’ve been benched, I’ve been feeling jittery and out of sorts all the time.” <br/><br/>Draco coughs. The guilt threatens to spill from his mouth in tendrils of confessions he should not even think to make. World famous Quidditch player, Ginevra Weasley, benched for the season due to the battering her ankle bone took from a rogue bludger and Draco’s here, having an affair with her husband. <br/><br/>Her world famous Saviour husband rising in the Auror ranks, being groomed for either Minister or Head Auror. <br/><br/>It’s so palpably horrifying, that he wants to laugh. <br/><br/>“What have you been doing?” He asks her instead, avoiding the subject matter of either her husband or their marriage. “To keep busy? Surely you’re not moping around all day, alone, in that great big house of yours.”<br/><br/>She barks out a laugh. “I assure you, I’m not. I think I’d go stark raving mad if I had to be cooped up in Grimmauld all day, everyday. No, I’ve been helping George out at the shop, learning to cook from Mum, this and that, you know.” <br/><br/>He nods. He understands the importance of taking up any job available to fill up time that would otherwise be spent spiralling down the murky alley of dangerous thoughts and rabid memories. <br/><br/>“How’s the shop doing?” He asks. He’s always harboured a secret admiration for Fred and George Weasley for the stunt they pulled in Fifth Year, and their ensuing resounding success. During the summer of Sixth Year, more than once he’d placed orders under a different name for some puking pastilles and skiving snackboxes. The wrappings are still buried beneath the mattress in his childhood bedroom, the one he moved out of after the events of the War. <br/><br/>Ginevra brightens. “Great, now that Ron’s left the Aurors to work with George. He was always so good with strategy– he’s helping out with advertisement and accounting, and George feels steadier, working with a brother again.” She doesn’t mention that last bit with any hint of resentment or bitterness, just a flash of melancholy in her wide brown eyes. “It’s been fun, working with them on the stuff– George’s always been a fucking genius, everyone thought Fred was the crazy one, he was just louder. George was the one who thought up all the stupid pranks which <em>worked</em>.” <br/><br/>“And the cooking with Mo– your mother?” <br/><br/>“Sunday roasts are my responsibility now,” she says with a bright laugh. <br/><br/>His throat clenches. Sunday roasts remind him of all the visions his brain conjures of Harry on the weekends, in Ginevra’s arms, lifting the Weasley brats onto his broad shoulders, playing Quidditch with Teddy Lupin and drinking beer with Ronald and George. It’s only fitting that Ginevra is responsible for cooking them now– there’s a metaphor there somewhere that Draco is both too tired to look for and too afraid to find. <br/><br/>Sunday roasts remind him of Harry on Tuesday evenings with his flashing eyes and aggressive thrusts and his cruel, cutting words that Draco never remembers through the fog of lust and pleasure and agony. Sunday roasts remind him of everything he’s lost, of everything he never had in the first place. <br/><br/>He shoots Ginevra a smile and wonders if she can tell that he’s thinking about her husband, of loving him, of kissing him, of being inside him. If she can, she doesn’t show it, looking as cheery as ever with her lot in life. <br/><br/>She stretches her legs out under the table, and yawns. “Are you not sleeping well?” he finds himself asking. He regrets it immediately when she shoots him a sheepish grin and says, “Oh no, nothing like that. Just last night that we–“ she blushes and Draco holds up a hand. <br/><br/>“I assure you, Potter’s sex life is no business of mine,” he manages thickly, the words tasting like dirt in his mouth. “I would rather not be put off my coffee.” <br/><br/>She hides her face in her hands and shakes with laughter, and he cracks a pained smile. <em>This is what being stabbed feels like,</em> he thinks. <em>How many times will you cut me open, my love?</em> <br/><br/>Lovegood arrives by their table, a serene smile in place, blonde hair twisted up on her head, the edges of the owl feather earrings she’s wearing brushing her bare shoulders. <br/><br/>“How’s Scrivenshaft’s?” She asks him, setting down their drinks. <br/><br/>“Doing well,” he says, grateful for the distraction. “We just got our new shipment of Moleskine journals.”<br/><br/>“And how’s Harry?” She asks Ginevra, and Draco’s grateful their attention is directed towards each other, thankfully missing his flinch. <br/><br/>Something undetectable passes over Ginevra’s features. He’d have missed it if he weren’t so attuned to everything Harry, everything even remotely related to Harry, everything like the smell of treacle tarts on a summer morning as he passes by a bakery– <br/><br/>He’s letting his mind wander again. <br/><br/>“He’s alright,” she says, but the smile she supplies to accompany the words is strained. “Throwing himself into work as always.” <br/><br/>“Still?” Lovegood asks. “I thought you spoke to him.” </p><p>Her eyes briefly fit to Draco’s assessing and hesitant. He wonders if he should offer to leave. He feels discomfited enough, it wouldn’t exactly be a hardship. “I–“ he begins, but Ginevra cuts him off with a wave of a broom calloused hand.</p><p> </p><p>“I did,” she says, addressing Lovegood. “And he’s… there, more. But only in person. It’s like his mind is somewhere else.” <br/><br/>A traitorous part of Draco rejoices. He crushes it like the venomous bug it is. <br/><br/>Lovegood lays a pale hand on her shoulder, and though her face if turned away from Draco, something about her willowy posture, the way she bends towards Ginevra like a piece of helpless iron unable to resist the forcefield of an industrial magnet betrays the melancholy he would find on her features. <br/><br/>He’s seen it before, Lovegood’s face at the Ministry events where Harry appears with Ginevra on his arm and the photographers swarm them like bees. He’s suspicious his own face resembles that melancholy, resigned set more than he’s comfortable acknowledging. <br/><br/>“I’m a Floo call away,” Lovegood says, and Ginevra raises her hand to place it on top of hers. <br/><br/>“I know,” she says, and her smile is soft. Kind. <br/><br/>Oblivious. <br/><br/>Lovegood walks away, and Draco wonders what to do with his newfound knowledge that Harry hasn’t been mentally present in his relationship with Ginevra. With the knowledge that Ginevra has noticed, and that she is hurting, and that though some part of Draco, a small and evil part appreciates this turn of events, most of him aches for her. <br/><br/>Kinship, he thinks. A feeling all Slytherins know a little too well. <br/><br/>Silence reigns. <br/><br/>“He’s having an affair,” she blurts out, a few uncomfortable moments into the quietness. “I’m sure of it.” <br/><br/>Draco jolts.</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t mean to, but the sudden, overwhelming shock of knowing that Ginevra <em>knows</em> startles him worse than he could have imagined it would. He’s worried about this moment many times, alone in bed on cold nights when Harry and him weren’t supposed to meet, but his aching, foolish heart wanted the comfort of those broad hands and strong shoulders and muscled thighs anyway. On those nights, he’d imagined Harry’s hands on Ginevra’s waist, his thighs against hers, his shoulders bracketing her into their bed. On those nights, he’d swallowed against the lump in his throat rising at the manufactured memory of those images, buried his face in pillows and had desperately tried to succumb to the non existent pull of sleep. On those nights he’d wondered what would happen if she were ever to find out. <br/><br/>How she would react. <br/><br/>Which hex she might use. <br/><br/>He hadn’t thought of sitting across from her at a coffee shop, watching her Quidditch toned shoulders hunch in on themselves. <br/><br/>There are dreams, there are wild dreams and then there is reality. <br/><br/>“Is he now,” he says, and marvels at the smoothness of his voice. The calm mask. The overlay of an upbringing tailored for these situations. <br/><br/>She nods, a jerky, pathetic movement, unsuited to her vibrancy. <br/><br/>“It’s been a long time coming,” she says, and Draco’s eyebrows rise in surprise. Potter and him haven’t been falling into bed for a long time, after all. Long enough for him to sink the claws of emotions into Harry’s unavailability, but not long considering the bigger picture. He wonders how many men there have been before him. He barely holds in the shudder. <br/><br/>“How so?” <br/><br/>She shrugs. “He’s been pulling away for a while. Two years, give or take. I always thought, I always <em>knew</em>–“</p><p> </p><p>She cuts herself off, and the look on her face claws at Draco’s heartstrings. He waits, and she doesn’t disappoint, taking a deep breath to continue, “I always thought he’d end up being… unfaithful. Do you know what it’s like, being dubbed the Golden Couple? Expectations, the madness of the press, the events and the constant stalking– I knew it would come, but I wanted him anyway.” <br/><br/>“You knew he’d cheat?” </p><p>She shrugs again. “We’ve been together since Hogwarts, Draco. He’s always been something of an explorer. Hoping he’d be satisfied to simply settle with me would be naive, and growing up with six brothers breaks you out of naivety by the time you’re three and sitting in the tool shed with a broken broom.” <br/><br/>“You aren’t a <em>settlement</em>, Ginevra Weasley.” <br/><br/>He doesn’t know where the words come from. He doesn’t know why he says them. He only knows that she doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve what he’s done, what he’s helped Harry to do to her. <br/><br/>She laughs, and it’s a bright sound in the gloom of the conversation.<br/><br/>“Do you know who it is?” He asks, and his fingers twist in the lacy edge of the tablecloth. “Who he’s…” <br/><br/>“Fucking on the side?” She asks, drily, and he doesn’t have enough self control to hide the wince. “I have some idea.” <br/><br/>He looks at her, but her face is unreadable. Open and honest as always, but indecipherable. “Oh?” he prompts, and she smiles. <br/><br/>“The wife always knows,” she says, and the edges of the smile turn sad. “I don’t want to, and I wish I didn’t, but I do.” <br/><br/>“You’re certain?” <br/><br/>“No,” she says, and looks down at the table. “Of course not. And until I am, I wouldn’t like to cast aspersions.” <br/><br/>“You seem… extraordinarily okay with the idea.” <br/><br/>She laughs again. He’s almost surprised by how often she does it, except it is quite unsurprising coming from Ginevra. The way she is, the person she is, laughter comes as naturally to her as cowardice does to Draco. <br/><br/>“I’ve had a while to get used to it.” <br/><br/>“That doesn’t make it okay.” <br/><br/>“It makes it bearable.” <br/><br/>“You must hate them,” he says, and clenches his eyes shut briefly before meeting hers. He doesn’t really care anymore about how much these little tells betray. <br/><br/>“Who? The other man?” <br/><br/>The words catch him off guard. Blaise’s almost mocking mistress and definitely mocking gay lover echo in his head. Ironic, that Ginevra should be offering him more dignity than even his best friend did. <br/><br/>But then again, honour was never any of his lot’s strong suit.</p><p> </p><p>He nods, in acquiescence and Ginevra shakes her head rather adamantly. There’s perfect understanding clear in her eyes. “I’ve loved Harry, Draco. I know how easy it is.” <br/><br/>“You seem awfully certain that this other man… <em>loves</em> him.” The words are choked, strangled. His voice barely sounds like his own. </p><p>“Does he not?”</p><p> </p><p>He wonders how she can be so calm, so reasonable, so composed as his entire world, his carefully constructed realities shatter to pieces around him. <br/><br/><em>Does he not?<br/><br/>He does, he does, he does. <br/><br/>I love him. I love him. I love him.</em></p><p> </p><p>It feels like a sin to admit this to anyone before Harry. His nod sends chills of damnation down his shivering spine. If she wasn’t sure before, she is now. <br/><br/>“Then I understand,” she says, and he looks up at her through blurry eyes to see the shaky smile still in place. <br/><br/>They sit in silence for a few minutes. She sips her tea and Draco stares dispassionately at his hot chocolate. The mere thought of putting it to his lips makes him nauseous. <br/><br/>“Draco, I don’t hate you.” <br/><br/>He traces the edge of the tablecloth. <br/><br/>“Draco, I– I’m not happy with it, but I– I can’t judge.” <br/><br/>His head snaps up at that. The guilt in her eyes, in every line of her clenched jaw, in the tightness of her mouth is evident. She sighs when their eyes meet and he wonders how half an hour has reduced the bubbly delight of a person on the sidewalk to <em>this. <br/><br/></em>“There was– there was a woman, once. I was away for a game, and Harry hadn’t called in days, and I was fucking furious, and she was there, and she was beautiful and I– I made a decision I couldn’t take back. One I had to live with, bury deep within myself, one I had to face in the mirror every day after that. I couldn’t look Harry in the eye for months.” <br/><br/>It isn’t what he expected, but it doesn’t make anything better. <br/><br/>“You were angry and you fucked up once, Ginevra. It’s not the same thing.” He’s hoarse. Hoarser than he was the night after Harry left him in a hotel room once with come sliding down his thighs, his face buried in the pillow, his throat burning from where Harry had pressed against his Adam’s apple with all the lean, coiled energy of a wildcat. <br/><br/>“Infidelity has many forms, Draco. So does guilt.” <br/><br/><em>Infidelity.</em></p><p> </p><p>Not the roughened edges of affair, or the sting of cheating or the hiss of a whispered mistake. Infidelity, a name, a sin, a rounded roll of a word, sitting casually between them. <br/><br/>“Does Harry know you’re here?” He asks. <br/><br/>She shakes her head. “Believe it or not, I didn’t leave the house to accost you on Diagon.” She smiles. “Happy coincidence, eh?” <br/><br/>He’s startled into a laugh. “Indeed.”<br/><br/>There’s awkward silence again, but it feels less suffocating. Less overwhelming. The guilt still burrows deep, and his world is in shambles, but he’s not writhing on the floor from the pain of a thousand stinging jinxes. It’s a win. <br/><br/>It feels like a pyrrhic victory and tastes of blood and regret. <br/><br/>“Draco, I–“ she begins, and hesitates. “I will always love him. But it’s been a while and I– I don’t think–“ <br/><br/>Her face crumples and Draco’s senses fire as the panic sets in. <br/><br/>“I just don’t think it’s worth it anymore.” <br/><br/>He’s talking before he knows what he’s saying. <br/><br/>“He ended it,” he says, and his words are rushed, fast. “He ended it, he left, he chose you. I’m nothing, I swear, he made it clear, he chose you. I was just a fling, just a stupid decision after too many drinks, it wasn’t real anyway, don’t worry, he ended it, he ended, he ended it, he left–“ <br/><br/>There’s a warm hand covering his mouth, stopping the ensuing barrage of words and he wonders why it’s there. Something wet and warm slides down his cheek and it takes him a few inordinately long moments to realise he’s crying. <br/><br/>To realise his breaths are laboured, and his throat is aching, and his palms hurt from where his nails have dug in. <br/><br/>To realise that he’s in the midst of a panic attack and that Ginevra Weasley’s slim palm over his mouth and her other hand sure and firm on his wrist is all that is grounding him to reality. <br/><br/>“Breathe with me,” she says, and exaggerates her breaths. <br/><br/>One, two, three. <br/><br/>Three words.</p><p> </p><p><em>I love him. I love him. I love him. <br/><br/></em>Four. Five. Six. <br/><br/>Six letters. <br/><br/><em>He left.</em></p><p> </p><p>Seven. Eight. <br/><br/><em>I love him. I love him. I love him.</em></p><p> </p><p>He sobs and he wonders why he isn’t recoiling from it, gasping from it, pushing Ginevra away. He wonders why Harry is eating into everything, consuming every part of him, consuming every waking thought until he can’t think any longer as he spirals into an echoing cry within the confines of his mind– a constant, throbbing echo of <em>I love him, I love him, I love him.</em></p><p> </p><p>“I love him,” he says, and the words are wet and muffled against Ginny’s palm. <br/><br/>“I know,” she says, removing it. <br/><br/>His eyes are blurred. Her's are sad. Dry. Resigned. <br/><br/>“Love is a battlefield. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.” <br/><br/>She rises to her knees, kisses him on the cheek. <br/><br/>“Sometimes you give up.” <br/><br/>She leaves. <br/><br/>Love is a battlefield. <br/><br/><em>Love. Love. Love.</em> <br/><br/>I love him.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The pounding on the door gets louder with every passing second, and when stuffing his head under the pillow to block it out does not help, Draco’s resolve breaks.<br/>
<br/>
He gropes on the bedside table, cruelly rejoicing when his fingers close around the glass that had been his only companion the previous night. With every ounce of strength he can muster in his groggy, sleep mussed condition, he flings it backwards, hoping it hits the floor or the wall instead of his bare legs on the bed. He is in no mood to pick out glass shards from his calves or wipe whisky dregs from his sheets.<br/>
<br/>
It hits the wall and the sound of shattering glass fills the emptiness of the flat and for a brief, blissful moment, the pounding stops.<br/>
<br/>
Then–<br/>
<br/>
“Open the <em>fucking</em> door, Malfoy!”<br/>
<br/>
Draco’s heart skitters.<br/>
<br/>
That voice, that intensity. The thinly masked rage. He doesn’t know how long a measly door will hold Potter back in a mood like this.<br/>
<br/>
He gets up, groaning when the motion causes the world to tilt dangerously, black spots appearing before his eyes. He blinks a few times, adjusting to reality separate from the darkness beneath his covers, and takes in the sight of his bedroom. There’s broken glass everywhere (thankfully not on the bed). He summons his bedroom slippers with a lazy flick, certain that he’ll shred his soles to pieces if he tries to navigate the mess in his current hungover and distinctly discombobulated state.<br/>
<br/>
There’s a full-length mirror in the living room which he passes by without glancing even once at his reflection. Undoubtedly he looks as regretful as he feels, and he sees no point in facing down his bad decisions at some ungodly hour of the morning.<br/>
<br/>
He pretends it has nothing to do with not being able to look himself in the eye and face everything he said–<br/>
<br/>
Fuck.<br/>
<br/>
He pauses briefly before opening the door, the stray thought that Potter of all people should never see him like this–<br/>
<br/>
Potter’s face in the dirt-streaked mirror of a secluded bathroom. Potter outside his Azkaban cell. Potter forcing the guards to undo his restraints after the full pardon. Potter leaving him wrecked more times than he cares to count in myriad hotel rooms in myriad states of undress and debauchery.<br/>
<br/>
This is <em>nothing </em>in comparison to every embarrassing position Potter has seen him in<em>. </em>A hangover does not hold a candle to writhing on the floor bloody and emptied from a cutting curse and Potter has seen him there, so really, there is no shame in this.<br/>
<br/>
He flings the door open and flinches violently when the unadulterated sunlight hits his retinas with all the force and vengeance of afternoon. Potter’s shoulders are much too broad, but inadequate in the face of the incomparable pain of sunlight.<br/>
<br/>
“Come in or leave,” he mumbles at the vaguely Potter shaped silhouette before turning his back on it, moving further into the cool, dark interior of his apartment.<br/>
<br/>
He’s sitting on the sofa by the time Potter nears it, his heavy gait giving away his pent up frustration. Potter moves light as a cat until he’s angry, when every aspect of him seems to radiate <em>weight</em>.<br/>
<br/>
He hates that he knows this. Hates that he has watched Potter enough to know his emotions from the sound of his footsteps. Hates that he can recall the weight of Potter’s rage tightened figure pushing and sliding against the muscles of his back.<br/>
<br/>
“Ginny left,” Potter says, and Draco knows he notices the way Draco’s shoulders tighten and relax at the name. “She told me what happened. Said you had a panic attack.”<br/>
<br/>
He almost has another one, stopped only in time by Potter adding, “Didn’t know her knowing was that much of a fear for you.”<br/>
<br/>
So Potter doesn’t know about that haunted admission.<br/>
<br/>
Love is a battlefield.<br/>
<br/>
I love him.<br/>
<br/>
I love you.<br/>
<br/>
“No one likes to be exposed as the other woman, now do they?” he drawls. It’s a weak rejoinder, weaker than anything Draco has ever thrown at Potter, a barb directed more towards himself if anything, but it makes Potter flinch.<br/>
<br/>
“You’re not… you’re not a fucking…”<br/>
<br/>
“Woman?” Draco prompts. “No, I suppose not. Ought not to get it wrong when that’s what drew you to me in the first place, huh?”<br/>
<br/>
He turns to face Potter for the first time since he left their hotel room in Camden, and his breath nearly punches out of him.<br/>
<br/>
Harry has always been so fucking beautiful.<br/>
<br/>
<em>I love him. I love you.</em><br/>
<br/>
Harry holds up a sheaf of papers. “She had these ready,” he says. Draco doesn’t need to read the words on them to know they are divorce papers.<br/>
<br/>
Draco nods. Nothing seems adequate in response. Nothing seems appropriate. Nothing he can offer, and nothing Harry could take from him with a clear conscience.<br/>
<br/>
Draco half expects Harry to throw punches or hexes or at least throw his words about, but Harry ambles over to the sofa and perches on the arm of it, his delicate pose at odds with the heaviness radiating from every angle of his posture.<br/>
<br/>
“She had these ready,” he says, and sounds so lost that every part of Draco convulses.<br/>
<br/>
He doesn’t try to keep the mask up anymore. There’s no point. “She said she saw it coming,” he says and cringes when his polished voice sounds broken.<br/>
<br/>
Shattered glass in his bedroom. Shattered hearts in every bedroom they have been in together. Shattered voices, shattered lives.<br/>
<br/>
Draco breaks anything he touches and even though his hands itch to reach out for Harry, he keeps them clenched in his lap.<br/>
<br/>
“Everyone saw it coming,” Harry says. Draco isn’t surprised. “Luna apparently keeps up with Gin, calls her all the time, Ron has been waiting for me to say something, Hermione just shrugged and said it had to happen at some point.”<br/>
<br/>
“When did she send those to you?” Draco asks, incredulous.<br/>
<br/>
“This morning,” Harry says. “She left last night, came over to give them to me today morning.”<br/>
<br/>
“And you’ve already spoken to three people about it?”<br/>
<br/>
“Four, if we’re counting you.”<br/>
<br/>
“We’re not– how <em>fast</em> do you talk to people, exactly?”<br/>
<br/>
Harry turns to look at him. A corner of his mouth twitches up in a smile, and oh– how unfair of him– how unfair of this gorgeous, cruel man to do this to him, to smile like that, to weaponise Draco’s fondest memories against him.<br/>
<br/>
“What time do you think it is?” Harry asks.<br/>
<br/>
“I don’t think of time,” Draco says automatically, eyes focused on the little tilt of Harry’s mouth. “It’s all a social construct. Illusions.”<br/>
<br/>
Harry laughs. It’s weak, barely there, but it’s genuine. “It’s four in the afternoon.”<br/>
<br/>
Draco distantly wonders if he should be surprised. He realises in the face of that laugh, he isn’t. He realises he simply does not care. He realises he wouldn’t care about time ever again if Harry spent it in his company.<br/>
<br/>
“Have you eaten something?” Harry asks, and Draco is so distracted that he doesn’t even register the question. It’s only when Harry pokes him sharply in the rib that he actually startles and asks Harry to repeat.<br/>
<br/>
“Have you eaten?” Harry asks, an exasperated edge to his voice. “From the way you look, I doubt you’ve consumed anything except generous whisky servings in the past twenty-four hours.”<br/>
<br/>
“Shut up.”<br/>
<br/>
“Do you have eggs?”<br/>
<br/>
“Eggs?”<br/>
<br/>
“Yes, Draco, eggs, they’re white, and they have shells, and there’s stuff inside called–“<br/>
<br/>
“I know what eggs are, you fucking twat,” Draco says. “Why are you asking?”<br/>
<br/>
“Because it’s four.”<br/>
<br/>
“And?”<br/>
<br/>
“You haven’t eaten.”<br/>
<br/>
Something warm blooms in Draco’s chest. Draco feels the knife twist in his gut as he tries to squash it and fails.<br/>
<br/>
The warmth blossoms.<br/>
<br/>
“I have eggs,” Draco says. “In the kitchen.”<br/>
<br/>
Harry looks down at his hands, the papers, the legal jargon on them and the edge of Ginevra’s looping signature catches Draco’s eye.<br/>
<br/>
“I haven’t signed.”<br/>
<br/>
“Do you want to?”<br/>
<br/>
Harry shrugs. The hope shrivels.<br/>
<br/>
“She was a habit,” he says. “A good one.”<br/>
<br/>
“What–“ He cuts himself off before he can ask. He doesn’t think he could handle an answer. Worse still, the lack of one.<br/>
<br/>
“And I thought– I always thought you were a spectacularly bad one, one I needed to break, one that brought me nothing but agony.”<br/>
<br/>
The hope sheds it’s own petals.<br/>
<br/>
“But I can’t quit you.”<br/>
<br/>
And when their eyes meet, there’s something there so full of pain and aching and longing that Draco couldn’t stay away if he wanted to. He recalls Lovegood’s body bending towards Ginevra’s in the coffee shop, his father’s hands seeking out his mother’s waist even in the darkness. He inches closer. Their mouths are a hair’s breadth apart. When Draco speaks, his breath ghosts Harry’s parted lips.<br/>
<br/>
“Tell me to stop.”<br/>
<br/>
A prayer. A whisper.<br/>
<br/>
“Why?”<br/>
<br/>
“Because you don’t want this.”<br/>
<br/>
“How could I not?”<br/>
<br/>
And it hurts, it aches, but they’re surging towards each other, mouths meeting, lips seeking out the familiar crevices and dips to trace, mouths parting, breaths mingling.<br/>
<br/>
How could I not?<br/>
<br/>
How could I not want this? How could I not choose you? How could I not fall in love?<br/>
<br/>
It feels important, the weight of that admission. It feels heavier than Harry’s gait. He doesn’t know if he should pile on the burden, but he can’t help it, can’t hold it back.<br/>
<br/>
He pulls away–<br/>
<br/>
“I love you.”<br/>
<br/>
Harry’s eyes are wide, and green, so green. Greener than the lights Draco sees flashing behind his eyes every time Harry pushes into him, every time Harry’s lips touch his. So green, and blown wide.<br/>
<br/>
“We’re going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Harry says and Draco almost collapses from how much it fucking hurts. At least Harry isn’t leaving.<br/>
<br/>
Something must have shown on his face because, for the second time in as many days, there’s a palm covering his mouth and eyes looking into his own, searching for something he doesn’t know how to hand over.<br/>
<br/>
“We’re going to pretend you didn’t say that while I have divorce papers in my hand. I am going to leave them on your sofa for now, and we’re going to go to the kitchen and I am going to make you eggs, and you will complain about how I make them runnier than you like them. Then, I will come back, ignore the divorce papers on your sofa while we fuck in your bedroom, and in the evening you will take me somewhere to have dinner. And when we come back here, I will put those divorce papers on your coffee table, possibly have a breakdown, which you will hold me through and then I will sign them. And then we’ll fuck again.”<br/>
<br/>
Draco knows his eyes have widened significantly. He wonders how he doesn’t have vision encompassing the whole room from how stretched the corners of his eyes feel, but everything has been consumed by Harry.<br/>
<br/>
Harry who’s lower lip is trembling just slightly. Harry who leans into his touch when Draco raises a hand to his cheek.<br/>
<br/>
“And then…” Harry continues, and his voice sounds choked, sounds broken. “And then, when I stay the morning after, we’ll wake up to each other and you can say it then. And I will either start laughing or start crying and whatever I do, you will kiss me through it. And we’ll go out for breakfast.”<br/>
<br/>
“I didn’t mean to do what I did,” Harry says. Draco’s finger still on his cheekbone. “I didn’t mean to say those things in Camden. Do what I did to you.”<br/>
<br/>
Draco shakes his head. Tries to say that it’s alright. That he doesn’t mind.<br/>
<br/>
“Stop,” Harry says. “Stop… Just, hold me accountable. Tell me I fucked up. Let me make it up to you. You didn’t deserve that. You didn’t deserve any of it.”<br/>
<br/>
Draco closes his eyes, and his entire being hurts. He tries not to cry but a tear slides down anyway. Harry removes the hand from his mouth and wipes it away.<br/>
<br/>
“Just say yes,” he whispers. “Just say yes to what I’ve said, and we’ll be okay.”<br/>
<br/>
So Draco does. </p>
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